As soon as Seokjin walked into the Women’s Studies faculty office, all the women looked up from their desks and stared at him with shock written on their faces. His face began to blush as he avoided their eyes. He was usually very confident, but this atmosphere was different; he couldn’t tell whether or not they were shocked at him being a man or him being so good-looking.

“Excuse me,” he walked over to Dr. Kang’s desk, “I’m the new teacher’s assistant.”

“Oh, welcome,” Dr. Kang turned and stood up to shake his hand, “let me give you a tour of the building.”

“Yes.”

“This is your desk,” she pointed to the smaller, cleaner desk right behind hers, “you can leave your backpack here while we go on the tour.”

“Okay,” he set his backpack down on the chair.

“Oh, also, your schedule was posted on the Kakao messenger group for my assistants… check it when you have the chance. Everyday when you come in, make sure you check my email and calendar for any tutoring sessions. If I need your help with anything, it’ll be left on top of the desk, so feel free to work on that stuff if I’m ever out of the office.”

“Yes, mam.”

“Come on, I’ll show you the lecture halls and classrooms.”

They walked through the entire building and looked through all the classrooms and labs before returning to the office.

“So, since you’ll be working a good five hours a day, you better get acquainted with the staff here,” she looked around for a second, “oh, Jisoo-ah, come over here.”

“Yes? Yes,” the slim and shorter girl from the front desk walked over to them.

“This is Kim Seokjin,” Dr. Kang gestured to Seokjin, “he’s my new teacher’s assistant, so add him to the department Kakao group.”

“Oh, yes,” Jisoo smiled at him.

Seokjin studied her up and down and thought to himself that she must have been the beautiful girl that everyone talked about, “it’s nice to meet you. Please take care of me in the future.”

“It’s nice to meet you too.”

He suddenly had a thought, that must be the hot assistant everyone was talking about… she’s not all that.

“Where’s Joohyun,” Dr. Kang asked Jisoo.

“Oh, she should be coming in soon.”

Just as she said that, a calm and sharp voice caught their attention, “I’m here.”

When Joohyun walked into the office, it seemed like time had slowed down as Seokjin studied her from head to toe; her face was abnormally symmetrical while her body proportion made up for her height. Unbeknownst to him, his breath was inevitably taken away by the cold and mysterious aura that surrounded her. He smirked, retracting his previous mental thought about Jisoo after realizing that Joohyun was the office assistant his friends had warned him about.

As she came up to stand in front of him, he froze in place, actually considering the possibility that he’d just fallen in love at first sight, which was something he didn’t take lightly and hardly believed to be possible.

“Welcome to the team,” Joohyun said coldly to him with a hand stretched out, “I’m Bae Joohyun.”

“Oh,” he stuttered, “I’m Kim Seokjin, nice to meet you.”

Right at the moment that he grabbed her hand, he felt a jolt of excitement run through his veins, as if the temperature of his body had just jumped up by a couple dozen Celsius.

She let out a cynical chuckle and pulled her hand away, showing a soft smile on her face. He suddenly grinned when he realized that rather than being nice, her expression more or less said, “I’m going to kill you.”

“What’s so funny,” her smile went away.

“Uh, n-nothing, just happy to join the team.”

She chuckled but held an irritated expression on her face.

“Be nice,” Dr. Kang smacked her shoulder.

“Yah, Dr. Kang,” she whined.

“Don’t mind her,” she said to Seokjin, “she has quite the prickly personality, but she’s the most experienced office assistant here and have worked on multiple research studies for me, so she’s definitely one to ask for advice if you need any. You’re a Family Psychology major, right?”

“Yes, that’s right. I’m hoping to gain a lot of knowledge for my final thesis here.”

“May I ask what the topic is exactly?”

“Oh, well, I don’t have an actual thesis plan yet, but I think it’ll revolve around the study of women’s roles in the family setting in Korea… something like that.”

“That’s perfect… we’re currently working on a study about suicide rate in accordance with bipolar disorder by studying how parents play a part in early childhood… Joohyun is actually the lead research analyst for this study, so maybe you two could work on it together.”

“Oh, of course, I’d love to,” he glanced over to Joohyun who was irritably smirking to herself.

“Good,” Dr. Kang looked at her watch, “I really wanted to take you to lunch today because it’s your first day, but I actually have a lunch meeting with some colleagues… Joohyun, please take him for me.”

“W-what,” she was shocked.

“You’re the best,” Dr. Kang patted her shoulder as she quickly grabbed her purse and started to leave the office in a split second, “go ahead and use the office card, it’s on me.”

“W-wait a minute,” she shouted after Dr. Kang to retaliate.

Jisoo chuckled in amusement and turned away, “hwaiting.”

“Jisoo-ah,” she whispered loudly after Jisoo.

“So, should I call you sunbae,” he said in a slightly teasing way.

She turned and shot a death stare at him, making him turn away suddenly, blushing and chuckling to himself.

She sighed, “don’t call me anything other than Joohyun-ssi… grab your bag…”

He smiled and picked up his backpack, then followed her out of the building. Half-way through the campus, she began to notice every student staring at them. For a few seconds, she wondered why everyone was staring until she turned to look at him; his face was calm and looked like he was always smiling, purposely, of course.

“What a fake,” she whispered to herself.

“What was that?”

“Oh, nothing… so why’d you choose Dr. Kang?”

“Because she’s really pretty.”

She stopped walking and glared at him again.

He laughed in reaction, stopping and turning to face her, “I’m just kidding… she’s the director of the Women’s Studies department, so I thought it’d be the best position to gain some experience and also learn about her studies in the process.”

She scoffed and continued walki